Locus Focus

Locus Focus host Barbara Bernstein talks with local, regional and national experts, activists and policy makers about climate change, food policy, land use, salmon restoration, forest management and all the other things that matter in our environment.

The oil industry has targeted the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies as the most direct shipping route to move heavy equipment to Tar Sands operations in Northeastern Alberta. Since 2010 megaloads of enormous mining equipment have rumbled over winding mountain river corridors through Oregon, Idaho and Montana. One of the first groups to bring attention to the megaloads was Wild Idaho Rising Tide, who is now trying to stop the longest and widest megaload yet. This industrial transport is heading up Highway 95 through Idaho to the Montana Refining Company in Great Falls.

Deep in the heart of South Texas, oil and gas wells are sprouting at an unprecedented rate, making the Eagle Ford Shale one of the biggest energy booms in America. But the boom could be a bust for local residents who fear for their health, not from the water in the ground, but the very air they breathe.

Senator Ron Wyden is sponsoring legislation that would double the logging on the so-called O&C lands. It is estimated that approximately 200,000 acres of older forests currently protected by the Northwest Forest Plan would be shifted into logging, including clearcutting, under S.1784. This plan is drawing intense criticism from scientific organizations who conclude that the Oregon and California Lands Act (S.

In the face of environmental degradation and climate change, scientific knowledge alone does not show us the way to take a meaningful stand to protect our planet in peril. Nor do economic incentives or political initiatives. On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with environmental philosopher and essayist Kathleen Dean Moore about the need for ethical values, moral guidance and principled reasons to become the centerpiece of this debate. Beginning with finding a resounding answer to the often-raised question: "How do we maintain our way of life without fossil fuels?"

If we continue to allow climate change to continue unchecked we are actually making the choice to adapt to a warming world that most of us do not want to fathom. Except for a particular class of entrepreneurs who see the catastrophes of climate change as an exciting market opportunity.

In early January, 4-Methylcyclohexane Methanol, a chemical used to process coal, spilled into the Elk River near Charleston, West Virginia. It turned out that little was known about the health hazards of the substance that contaminated the water supply for at least 300,000 people. In the wake of this disaster we still do not know the full story about what the longterm impacts will be on the health of the people affected by the spill.

A few species of trees have come to define what was once the nearly treeless landscape of California. Only two of these iconic species are native to California - Coastal Redwoods and Giant Sequoias. The other three - Eucalyptus, Orange and Palms - have, like most of California's residents, come from somewhere else. On this episode of Locus Focus we talk again with Jared Farmer, whose book Trees In Paradise explores the connections between the transplanted people and trees that have shaped the landscapes and cultures of California. Jared's appearance on Locus Focus was truncated by the demands of the pledge drive.

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It's been nearly two years since a neighborhood-backed plan was approved to rebuild the Sellwood Bridge with only two auto lanes, along with bike and pedestrian paths and street car tracks. But in recent months the final decisions on bridge design and funding have hit stumbling blocks. While the bridge is operated by the County, it connects on the west side with state-owned Highway 43 and on the eastside with city-owned SE Tacoma Street. These different jurisdictions are now caught up in a turf battle, holding the future of the Sellwood Bridge between their horns. On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Sellwood neighborhood activist Eric Miller about some of the sticking points between the city, county and state, and why the same issues of sustainability and livability that motivated the neighborhood to organize two years are still of major concern.

Eric Miller is a Sellwood resident and a current At-Large SMILE Board member. A public health physical therapist, Eric is currently a stay-at-home Dad and a community activist. He co-founded the Sellwood Playgroup Association to bring families with young children together and to build community. Through the Playgroup Association he organized a broad network of neighbors who helped prevent the Sellwood Bridge from being replaced by a huge, four-lane behemoth.

This past summer half a billion salmonella-tainted eggs were recalled. It turns out that these eggs were raised at huge factory farms in Iowa, where up to 300,000 hens are crammed into cages in filthy, rodent-infested sheds. The salmonella scare has made many people think twice about eating eggs, but according to Michael Greger, director of public health and animal agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States, it's not eggs that people should fear but the disease-ridden conditions in factory farms where these eggs are produced. This week on Locus Focus we talk with Dr. Greger about how industrial-scale factory farms impact the health and well-being of people as well as the animals confined in these operations.

Dr. Michael Greger is director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture in the farm animal welfare division of the Humane Society of the United States. A physician specializing in clinical nutrition, Greger focuses his work on the human health implications of intensive animal agriculture, including the routine use of non-therapeutic antibiotics and growth hormones in animals raised for food, and the public health threats of industrial factory farms. He also works on food safety issues, such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease), and plays a role in The HSUS's efforts to analyze and shape public policy concerning agriculture and nutrition.

Greger has been an invited lecturer at universities, medical schools and conferences worldwide. He is the author of "Heart Failure: Diary of a Third-Year Medical Student" (2000), "Carbophobia: The Scary Truth About America's Low-Carb Craze" (2005), and "Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching" (2006).

The summer of 2010 brought us some very dramatic weather extremes, from the monsoon flooding in Pakistan, and devastating mud slides in China, to the most intense heat wave and worst rash of forest fires that Russia has ever seen. Are these catastrophic events a sign that the impacts of climate change are already upon us? On this episode of Locus Focus host Barbara Bernstein talks with Oregon's State Climatologist, Phil Mote, about the significance of the historic floods and fires of the past summer, and what they portend for the future.

Since 2009 Philip Mote had been Oregon's State Climatologist and is the first director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University, where he is a professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences. Mote is a leading scientist on the impacts of climate change. His research into the effects of climate change on precipitation, temperature, snow pack and water resources led to his work on the 2007 fourth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He shared lead authorship of the snow and ice section of the report as well as the Nobel Prize it garnered. Prior to coming to Oregon, Mote was the Washington State climatologist, at the University of Washington in Seattle.

As students return to school this fall in Portland, many of them will also be returning to harvest vegetables from gardens they planted last spring. School gardens are becoming a feature of a growing number of schools in the Portland area. . . and around the country. In these gardens students learn the connections between the food they eat and the health of the world around them.

One of the first school gardens in Portland was the Garden of Wonders, started by chef and parent Linda Colwell at Edwards School in SE Portland in 1999. When Edwards School closed and its students moved to nearby Abernethy School, they took their garden with them. Today the Garden of Wonders is a model for teaching children how to appreciate real food by learning how to grow it themselves. And the veggies they grow are incorporated into the school lunch program.

On this episode we talk with Garden of Wonders founder Linda Colwell about how this program helps to educate students about the interconnected relationships of food, environment, ecology, communities, and cultural histories.

Linda Colwell, was trained at La Varenne in Paris, France and worked as a corporate chef for Merrill Lynch, Boston, MA. When she returned to Portland, Oregon, she worked as a butcher and sausage maker before opening a USDA school lunch program for Portland Public Schools. During her children’s early years, Linda volunteered for Front Line, supported the area developing farmers markets and as Co-Chair of the Portland Chapter of the Chefs Collaborative, became a leader in connecting farmers and chefs in the Willamette Valley. In 1999 and 2000, Linda managed the Chefs Collaborative “Adopt-a-School” program, a Chefs Volunteer initiative in fourteen elementary schools in Portland, Oregon. In 2000, she created the Garden of Wonders, making her a leader in Farm to School and School Garden Education. The Garden of Wonders was the first school garden education program in Oregon that integrated edible gardening with core curriculum in elementary schools. Linda created a one week “Chefs in Residence” project that designed USDA school lunch menus with local chefs using local ingredients as part of a “know your farmer, know your chef” experience for K-5 students. “Chefs in Residence” became the foundation for her next initiative, the Abernethy Scratch Kitchen, the first on-site scratch kitchen to serve children in Portland Public Schools (PPS) in 28 years. The pilot program was the first K-5 Wellness site in Portland that integrated school garden, garden-based education, cooking from scratch, farm tours and physical activity. Since 2006, Linda has developed Eat Think Grow, a community of partnered organizations that support Portland Public Schools in meeting it’s Wellness Policy through Farm to School and School Garden Education.

The Garden of Wonders Food and Garden Education Program involves students in the stewardship of the school’s organic garden and landscape in a way that is wholly integrated with the school’s curriculum. It strives to encourage enthusiasm and wonder in learning by integrating classroom education with hands-on experience in the natural world. Students participate in food and garden-based activities that are interwoven with grade-appropriate math, science, social studies, and arts curricula.

Now that oil has more or less stopped hemorrhaging from the Deepwater Horizon blowout, the mainstream media is reporting on a government study that claims that 75% of the oil that gushed into the Gulf of Mexico is gone. Only, that's not what the report actually said, and furthermore many scientists are disputing its methodology. On this segment of Locus Focus we'll find out what's really going on with all the oil from this disaster: along the beaches that line the Gulf Coast, on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, as well as deep underwater where the oil is least easily detected. Dr. Ronald Kendall, Director of the Institute of Environmental and Human Health and Professor and Chairman of the Department of Environmental Toxicology at Texas Tech University joins Locus Focus host Barbara Bernstein to clarify what's actually contained in the government report on the BP oil disaster, as well as what's missing. We discuss the longterm consequences of so much oil and toxic material spilling into the Gulf of Mexico and why this is a problem that won't disappear as soon as many parties would like to see.

Dr. Ronald Kendall is the founder and director of the Institute of Environmental and Human Health at Texas Tech University, where he also chairs the Department of Environmental Toxicology.

Protecting endangered salmon runs in Oregon has been an ongoing challenge. It turns out that one of the simplest ways of enhancing salmon habitat in the city is to remove culverts that carry streams under roads, but block fish from swimming upstream to reach spawning and rearing habitat. One of the best potential salmon streams in the city is Crystal Springs Creek, with headwaters on the Reed College campus and the Eastmoreland Golf Course. This area was once marshy wetlands. Before development, the wetlands retained excess water from flood events and provided important rearing and refuge habitat for salmon, and foraging and nesting sites for beavers, birds, turtles, frogs, and other wildlife. Crystal Springs is still home to coho and Chinook salmon, and steelhead trout, all listed under the Endangered Species Act. But a series of culverts impede fish passage along much of the stream's course. Removing these culverts is part of the focus of the city's Grey to Green Initiative, which is now seeking funding to remove 8 culverts along Crystal Springs, making nearly three miles of prime habitat accessible once again to salmon and steelhead.

Our guest this week on Locus Focus is Kaitlin Lovell, Senior Program Manager for the Bureau of Environmental Services' Science, Fish and Wildlife Program. We talk about why it is important for communities to steward the watersheds they live upon and how this project will not only improve salmon habitat in the city but also improve the quality of life of the salmon's human neighbors.

Kaitlin Lovell has been the manager for the Science, Fish and Wildlife Program for the City of Portland, Bureau of Environmental Services since 2006. Her job is to ensure the City's compliance with the Endangered Species Act, and work with BES and other City bureaus to make sure projects are planned, designed, permitted, constructed and implemented with the best fish and wildlife science, and improve the urban/watershed interface to benefit fish and wildlife where possible. Prior to joining the City, she was an Endangered Species Act attorney for Trout Unlimited.

Not too long ago North America's natural gas reserves were peaking out and the cost of natural gas began to skyrocket along with petroleum. Then all of a sudden, it seemed, we are being told that we have an almost endless supply of natural gas lying under much of the continent and that natural gas is the answer to our energy future. What we're not being told is that the unconventional process being used to extract this gas—called hydrofracturing—may potentially contaminate a wide swath of watersheds and drinking water systems across the country. One of the watersheds being threatened is the Delaware River, which provides drinking water to many municipalities in the northeast, including New York City.

This week on Locus Focus our guest is Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, an advocacy group that works to protect the longest undammed river east of the Mississippi from a growing barrage of assaults from development projects that contribute to sprawl, the aggressive extraction of resources, floodplain, habitat and wetlands destruction, new and increased pollution discharges, damming, dredging, dumping and spills.

For more information about the impact of fracking on human lives, water quality and natural resources, you can check out Josh Fox's new documentary Gasland.

Restarting America's nuclear power industry is frequently suggested as a means of curbing greenhouse gas emissions. But advocates of this back to the future scenario should study Robert Alvarez's recent report showing that the amount of plutonium buried at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State is nearly three times what the federal government previously reported. This means that a cleanup to protect future generations will be far more challenging than planners had assumed. And that's before any more nuclear waste is added to the toxic legacy of Hanford's forty years of Plutonium production.

This week on Locus Focus our guests are Robert Alvarez, Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. He discusses the ramifications of his study's findings. He's joined by Gerry Pollett, co-founder and executive director of Heart of America Northwest, a regional non-profit public interest organization that has spent over twenty years advocating for the timely cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

ROBERT ALVAREZ is a Senior Scholar at IPS, where he is currently focused on nuclear disarmament, environmental, and energy policies. Between 1993 and 1999, Mr. Alvarez served as a Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment. While at DOE, he coordinated the effort to enact nuclear worker compensation legislation. In 1994 and 1995, Bob led teams in North Korea to establish control of nuclear weapons materials. He coordinated nuclear material strategic planning for the department and established the department’s first asset management program. Bob was awarded two Secretarial Gold Medals, the highest awards given by the department.

Prior to joining the DOE, Mr. Alvarez served for five years as a Senior Investigator for the U. S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, chaired by Senator John Glenn, and as one of the Senate’s primary staff experts on the U.S. nuclear weapons program. While serving for Senator Glenn, Bob worked to help establish the environmental cleanup program in the Department of Energy, strengthened the Clean Air Act, uncovered several serious nuclear safety and health problems, improved medical radiation regulations, and created a transition program for communities and workers affected by the closure of nuclear weapons facilities. In 1975 Bob helped found and direct the Environmental Policy Institute (EPI), a respected national public interest organization. He helped enact several federal environmental laws, wrote several influential studies and organized successful political coalitions. He helped organize a successful lawsuit on behalf of the family of Karen Silkwood, a nuclear worker and active union member who was killed under mysterious circumstances in 1974.

GERALD POLLETT is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Heart of America Northwest. He brings 25 years of organizing experience on Hanford, environmental and peace issues, and political campaigns in Washington, as well as tremendous institutional memory and technical expertise to the organization. Gerry is frequently called on by regional and national media, and for guest lectures at universities and Continuing Legal Education seminars. Gerry has lobbied, written major legislation at federal and state level, and testified to Congress.

Gerry chairs the Hanford Advisory Board’s committee overseeing USDOE’s Hanford budgets, management and contracts. He has testified by invitation to U.S. Senate and U.S. House Committees, is frequently quoted in national and regional media. He also serves as general counsel for Legal Advocates for Washington, which provides legal advice on non-profit, electoral and hazardous waste law.

Gerry also has been serving on the board of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, and the Washington Coalition for Open Government. His work on Hanford and prior work on economics of electric utility forecasting has led to frequent requests that he lecture about the lessons of Hanford and the role of nuclear power in fighting global warming.

Last week on Locus Focus we talked about transforming school lunch programs into vehicles that encourage kids to eat healthy foods, while teaching them about the connections between food, health, and the environment. This week we look at a program in Portland that not only shows young people how to make healthy food choices, but actually helps them learn how to grow their own food. GROWING GARDENS gets at the root of hunger in Portland, by organizing hundreds of volunteers to build organic, raised-bed vegetable gardens in backyards, front yards, side yards and even on balconies, in low income neighborhoods on Portland's east side. On this episode of Locus Focus, we talk with Caitlin Blethen, who manages the

, which is cultivating the next generation of veggie eaters and growers. We're also joined by Gage Reeves, who teaches at Vernon Middle School, where a mighty school garden thrives, and Tyler White, a fifth grade gardener at Faubion School in NE Portland.

Caitlin Blethen manages “Youth Grow” the youth gardening program at the Portland based non-profit Growing Gardens. She has over ten years of experience working with school and youth gardening programs in Washington and Oregon and has a BA degree from the Evergreen State College. Her favorite part of her work is watching children explore, discover and learn about growing edible plants. Caitlin lives in SE Portland where she and her partner Bryan cultivate a mini-farm.

Gage Reeves teaches 5 - 8th grades at Vernon Middle School. He started the school's garden and is working now to build a school garden ed program that encompasses "core" curricular connections to health/nutrition, ecological responsibility, life/physical/earth sciences, in addition to teaching the students how to start, plant, and harvest food, grown at the school, and eaten in the school cafeteria. His wife Sarah Canterberry is an instrumental part of the garden program at Vernon as well and teaches the after school program garden club.

Tyler White will be starting fifth grade at Faubion School in NE Portland this fall. He comes from a family of chefs and gardeners and is carrying on his family traditions in the garden at his grade school.

In April a report was released showing that more than 9 million young adults, or 27 percent of all Americans ages 17 to 24, are too overweight to join the military and that national security in the year 2030 is "absolutely dependent" on reversing child obesity rates. According to the authors of the report we need to eliminate junk food and high-calorie beverages from schools, put more money into creating school lunch programs that serve real food to children. http://tinyurl.com/y7akr8m

On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Lisa Bennett, Communications Director for the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, CA, about a burgeoning movement to transform those wretched school lunches we all remember into tasty and healthy meals, made from ingredients supplied by local farmers and perhaps even the school's own edible garden. For nearly 20 years, the Center for Ecoliteracy has advocated for improving school lunches; using gardens as a way to encourage kids to eat healthy foods; and teaching young people about the connections between food, health, and the environment.

We'll learn about the new, healthier choices available in schools across the country and how they compare to traditional cafeteria fare. We'll also discuss the growing popularity of farm to school programs that are providing healthy, organic food for children, while supporting local farmers, and the proliferation of school gardens.

ABOUT LISA BENNETT:
Lisa Bennett is communications director of the Center for Ecoliteracy and co-author of SMART BY NATURE: Schooling for Sustainability (Watershed Media/U.C. Press, 2009). A former fellow at Harvard University's Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy in the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Lisa has written for many publications, including the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Huffington Post, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Lisa has spoken at the National Press Club and appeared on the BBC, C-SPAN, Hardball, and many other programs.

Comments

Barbara, I hope you might forward my comments to your guest. I was only able to listen to part of today's program but I am very interested. I want to raise my concerns about two prevailing frames that arise on your show and throughout serious discussion of climate change that I believe do great damage to the efforts to raise the awareness of the public and help them understand the urgency needed when addressing this issue.
First is the frame that global warming is happening slowly and will continue to do so. I do not believe the facts support such an assertion and not only does no one know that warming will not suddenly serge forward it seems to be doing exactly that. A report out last week raised the projected temperature for the planet by the end of the century to 9F from 4F degrees. That means that we are going to hit 4F by---2040? Until recently no one imagined the arctic ice cap could melt in anything like our lifetimes but in fact it will and it may do so as soon as 2013! The problem with the frames that give people the impression that GW is a slow process is that it provides fauls comfort, "Oh, technology will fix it before it happens," or "It is not my problem." Neither one is the case but too many people still think that way. So please start using a different frame from "by the end of the century," or “future generations." Instead say "within our life times," and stress the urgency. After all it is much more accurate to say catastrophic climate change is happening right now.

The second frame is that one cannot attribute any given weather event to global warming. That is only partly true. In fact one might say that you cannot not attribute any given weather event to climate change such is the post-industrial influence on the pre-industrial trajectory of the climate---we have departed the Holocene and are in the Antropocene some scientist tell us. It is like a basketball launched toward a basket that gets tipped by one of the players. Its trajectory is for ever changed. I think it is more accurate to say that the weather everywhere and everyday has been influence to some degree by GW. This is important because the frame that one cannot tell if an event is caused by climate change is asking them not to believe there own "eyes," experiences, or impressions which are often very astute. For instance in Oklahoma where I grew up we used to have thunderstorms in April and the 100F days did not come until late July. This year they had wild fires near Oklahoma City in April and the temperatures have been in the hundreds throughout much of this June---that has increasingly become the trend and is consistent with climate change projections. Now Oklahomans should by all rights believe that what they are experiencing is in fact global warming. It may be noted that Inhofe is a Senator from Oklahoma and one of the most radical global warming deniers and obstructionist in government.
I have been keeping up with this issue for a long time now and am alarmed at the rapidity that things are taking place. I truly believe we are probably in for crop failures, water shortages, and mass migrations here in North America, in this country, within our lifetimes and whereas I think there is a fine line to be drawn to not panic or send people into despair I think scientist tend to be much too measured in their statements. It is as though there is smoke billowing out of the projection room and the scientists don’t want be caught dead yelling fire in a crowded theater because there is no "proof" that there is in fact a fire.
Scientist have long dismissed the near term risk of a methane/co2 release from the arctic or the ocean meanwhile there is growing indications that that is exactly what is happening. As a NASA scientist you should know that a huge methane release was detected on Mars a few years ago and that is within a much more static system than ours----that should give us pause!
The public needs to be prepared in case there is a sudden spike in methane from the Arctic so I hope in the future Barbara you will direct your discussions of climate change toward the rapidity of changes already taking place and the potential danger of being too complacent and smug about what we know and what we think we do or do not know. Thank you.

I recently interviewed Phil Mote who has replaced climate change denier George Taylor as Oregon's State Climatologist. Like any careful scientist Mote does not feel comfortable attributing specific weather events to climate change. But he gave me a analogy that I like: It's like playing Russian Roulette and adding a second bullet to the chamber of the revolver. If you blow your head off it doesn't really matter whether it was the original bullet or added bullet that did you in.

While I support solar energy, I warn against pie-in-the-sky proposals that make it sound like we can find new sources to keep living our wasteful lives. The scale of the problem is lost when we pretend that putting solar panels on 100 roofs signifies real change.

There is some hope to be found in using solar power efficiently. This does NOT include powering electric resistance heaters with photovoltaics. It does mean passive solar heating, solar hot water, and solar clothes driers (AKA clotheslines).

When you have used conservation and innovation to convert the wasteful electric grid into a sustainable system, then we can begin the conversation about supplimenting the system for our transportation problems. Until then, the only real sustainable alternatives to petroleum are wind, human, and animal powered vehicles. Coal and nuclear, the primary sources of new electricity, are polluting uses of nonrenewable resources.

Walk, ride a bicycle, sail (without motor), and use horse and ox cart, if you are truly concerned about the serious threat of climate change. Park your car forever. We cannot afford cars any longer.

i think now is a good time to talk more about what socialism actually is - common ownership of the means of production - and what is is not - redistributing wealth. you are right to continue pointing out that what obama is talking about is a progressive tax structure, not socialism.

the progressive tax idea actually comes from adam smith himself, "It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion." [from book 5, ch.2 on taxes]

The intro music to Locus Focus is a song by Hugh Masakela called "Change." It's on his album "Time," which came out a few years ago. I plan on playing the song each week until Robert Mugabe relinquishes power in Zimbabwe.

Did you see the piece in the NY Times re schizophrenia and autism having possible roots in parental dna - that is mother mix:father's mix? That is female characteristics manifesting as schizophrenia from mother dna and autistic characteristics from father's?